Stars from a galaxy far, far away take Cannes by storm

Star Wars mania descended on Cannes yesterday, as the sixth and final instalment of George Lucas's epic series set "in a galaxy far, far away" received its world premiere.

Thousands of fans streamed into the Riviera resort, bringing traffic almost to a halt.

They waited for hours in the heat, packed behind barriers, hoping to glimpse the cast of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

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The film, which opens worldwide this week, may not be in official competition at the film festival but it dominated the entire town and its harbour.

Queen Mary II stood anchored specially for the occasion in the port for a few hours, so that Lucas, the writer-director, could receive a festival trophy on deck.

Most of the cast arrived for the premiere last night. Natalie Portman, Padme, looked chic with her head shaved for a role in her next film V For Vendetta; Hayden Christensen, who plays Anakin Skywalker, and Samuel L Jackson, whose character is called Mace Windu, were also there.

Ewan McGregor, the younger Obi-Wan Kenobe, first played by Sir Alec Guinness, was missing, busy in previews of Guys and Dolls in the West End.

But two other British actors were present: Ian McDiarmid (Emperor Palpatine, creator of the Galactic Empire) and Anthony Daniels, who as the fussy little robot C3PO is the only actor to appear in all six Star Wars films.

The cast were met by screams, cheers and frantic waves from fans. A smiling Daniels faced the media with a little waving model of C3PO on the table in front of him.

The first of the series was released 28 years ago and Revenge of the Sith completes the story. It explains how Anakin became Darth Vader, and shows Padme pregnant with Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia.

Lucas said it was not "the kind of fun, happy-go-lucky movie some of the other ones were".

He added: "I don't want people to bring their kids to something they don't feel comfortable with. I've always felt parents should make that decision."

Referring to a scene in which Anakin catches fire, Lucas added: "A lot of children have seen stunt men in films with fire on them. It's pretty routine. The biggest issue in this film is: Dad goes bad. And for a lot of kids, that's a pretty rough concept."

Natalie Portman said she enjoyed playing a pregnant woman: "I don't know that it gave me maternal feelings but my costumes were more comfortable, larger and more flowing. . . so it was a blessing in disguise." The two previous episodes of Star Wars were huge box-office hits but failed to please critics and some fans, who compared them unfavourably with the original trilogy.

But Lucas said: "I see it as one movie, so I don't pay attention if people like one chapter more than another.

"We have two fan bases, the over 25s and the under 25s. The older fan base is loyal to the first three films.

"Online, these two groups are at each other's throats but their devotion is about equal. It's like one group are Rolling Stones or Beatles fans, saying their music is the greatest thing they've ever heard, against hip-hop fans who say no, that's old folks' music."

Lucas surprisingly injected a note of controversy by noting the parallels between the Star Wars stories and real-life conflicts. He recalled he had first conceived of the saga at the time of the Vietnam War and the Nixon era.

"The issue was: how does a democracy turn itself over to a dictator?" he said. "When I wrote it, Iraq didn't exist [as an issue]. We were funding Saddam Hussein, giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn't think of him as our enemy.

"This really came out of the Vietnam era. The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq are unbelievable."

He expressed the hope that in America, the film would "awaken people to the dangers of democracy being subverted".

But no one in Cannes yesterday seemed too concerned about the geopolitical implications of this final Star Wars film. They were too busy craning their necks for a view of its stars.